Retired Coast Guard officer with decades of public health experience is Trump’s pick to lead CDC

By Sarah Owermohle, Brenda Goodman, Adam Cancryn, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump is nominating a former Coast Guard officer and public health official to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The president named Dr. Erica Schwartz on Thursday to run the embattled agency, which has been without a permanent director since Dr. Susan Monarez’s ouster in August.

“It is my Honor to nominate the incredibly talented Dr. Erica Schwartz,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “She is a STAR!”

Schwartz served as deputy surgeon general in Trump’s first administration, spent 24 years in the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as a rear admiral in the Coast Guard. She holds a medical degree from Brown University and a law degree from the University of Maryland.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team had recommended Schwartz to the president along with a slate of other appointees to shore up CDC leadership whom Trump also named Thursday.

They include US Food and Drug Administration Principal Deputy Commissioner Dr. Sara Brenner, who will serve as a public health adviser to Kennedy; Dr. Jennifer Shuford, commissioner of the Texas health department, who will become CDC deputy director and chief medical officer; and Sean Slovenski, a former Walmart and Humana executive who will serve as a deputy director and chief operating officer.

The secretary nodded to the incoming group of CDC leaders during a congressional budget hearing on Thursday.

“We’re bringing in an extraordinary team. … The team has been leaked, and it’s gotten applause from both Republicans and Democrats,” Kennedy said before the House Appropriations subcommittee on health. “I think this new team is really going to be able to revolutionize CDC and get it back on track and get it doing the job that it does better than any other health agency in the world.”

Schwartz certainly has a background in the CDC’s areas of expertise. During her time with the Coast Guard, she led disease surveillance and vaccination programs and wrote Coast Guard policy on pandemic influenza and other viral disease outbreaks.

She also played a role in the government’s response to natural disasters, including hurricanes and earthquakes.

Still, Schwartz will probably face skepticism from some senators over whether she’s willing to break with Kennedy on controversial issues such as vaccine policy.

The White House was under a deadline to nominate a permanent director of the CDC after Kennedy abruptly fired the last Senate-confirmed director, Monarez, in August. The federal Vacancies Act says a Senate-confirmed position can be open for only 210 days, and past that deadline, the agency cannot have an acting director. That 210-day mark fell in late March.

Currently, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is serving a dual role as director of the National Institutes of Health and as head of the CDC, after serving as its acting director.

If confirmed into the role, Schwartz will inherit an agency looking to strike a balance between its traditional public health mission and a slew of high-profile changes, exits and proposed budget cuts.

Monarez was in office for just under a month before she was fired by Kennedy over her refusal to rubber-stamp changes to vaccine policy. After her dismissal, several high-level officials in the agency resigned in protest, leaving a leadership vacuum.

Shortly after Monarez took office, a gunman who blamed vaccines for his health problems attacked the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters, firing more than 180 rounds that sprayed multiple buildings and killed DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose.

Prior to the shooting, CDC staffers had endured months of chaos. Thousands of reduction-in-force cuts hollowed out divisions and departments, though some of those were reinstated after legal action. Web pages on vaccine safety were edited without consultation with staff scientists to cast doubt on statements that vaccines do not cause autism. Political appointees filled top leadership posts that had once been occupied by career staff.

Kennedy dismissed a key panel of 17 experts that advise the CDC on its vaccine decisions, replacing them with his own picks, many of whom have emphasized the risks of vaccines while downplaying their health benefits. A federal judge has reversed some of Kennedy’s efforts, saying he probably violated federal procedures.

Meanwhile, measles cases in the US are at their highest level in three decades, and the nation risks losing its status as a country that has eliminated ongoing transmission of the highly infectious disease within its borders. Other infectious diseases, including whooping cough and mumps, have also surged as vaccination rates have dropped.

Schwartz will go before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for confirmation. The HELP committee has not yet voted on another Trump administration nominee, Dr. Casey Means, to serve as surgeon general. Means testified in a February hearing that circled back repeatedly to her views on vaccines, with some Republicans, including committee Chairman Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, expressing concerns about the administration’s changes to vaccine recommendations.

Asked by lawmakers on Thursday about morale at the CDC, Kennedy said that it has improved since broad layoffs led by federal DOGE Services last year and that the new CDC leadership will help the agency progress.

“Morale is much better than it was a year ago. I think a year ago, it was really at a nadir. You know, during all the [reductions in force],” he said.

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